


Life in Ursa Major

by Acai



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Coming Out, Disabled Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fluff, Found Family, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, It starts off sad but gets happier and happier as it goes along, M/M, Service Dogs, Slow Burn, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Nursey, coffee shop AU, dex is trying to find somewhere better for his brother, dex moves to boston to try and provide for his little brother, nursey goes to boston because he wants to start over, nursey's parents are great but they're busy and he's scared to disappoint them, they're both sweeties in unfortunate situations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 08:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13520922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/pseuds/Acai
Summary: It starts like this.Nursey is fed up and young and rebellion lights like fire in his bones and goads him to act out, and Dex yearns and yearns for more than he thinks he deserves.It starts like this, with Nursey asleep on the train to Boston and with Dex asleep on a bus to the same place. Everything, the sleepless nights on sanctuary stages and the polar bear dares into sleepy rivers, begins with two rides to somewhere better.





	Life in Ursa Major

**Author's Note:**

> [The title is from Seal Lullaby by Eric Whitacre. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxTghSZupv8)
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> Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit -- From Nothing, Comes Nothing
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> The first chapter is background, but chapters two through five are actual plot and aren't so dreary.

It starts like this. 

Nursey is fed up.

Nursey is fed up and young and rebellion lights like fire in his bones and goads him to act out. He’s sick of everything in the way that every teenager is when they realize that the world sucks, and he’s got the juvenile notion that he can do something about that.

It starts like this.

Dex yearns.

Dex yearns and yearns for something bigger and better than everything that he’s ever known—for more than he thinks that he deserves. The itching feeling that makes him want _more than this, God, please, anything else_ aches worse than a broken bone ever did, worse than long nights in the cold getting sprayed with waves of water on a boat.

It starts like this.

It ends like this.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_Then run._

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nursey had two hours.

In exactly two hours’ time, his parents would be home and his window of opportunity would be over. They’d be home for the rest of the week after that, and by the time that they left again on Monday, Nursey wouldn’t have the guts to go through with this anymore. There’s a knot forming in his stomach the whole time that he packs, threatening to unravel and keep him from going on.

But Nursey has to do this, so with numb hands he continues to pack a black schoolbag with clothes and toiletries and papers and pens.

He writes in his head as he packs, mentally scrawling angry poems for people who would never read them, because _God_ is he going to combust if he doesn’t get it out somehow. He’s yelling, in his mind. He thinks himself into a headache, until he has to sit down and rub his hands over his face to calm down the cacophony happening in his headchestheart.

And then he throws his phone onto his bed. And he slips his arms into the straps of his backpack.  And he leaves.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

It starts like this.

Nursey has just breached fifteen years old, and he’s learning for the first time in his life. Not literally, of course, but it certainly does feel that way. In this moment, Nursey has learned something that makes everything else he knows feel…fake.

It starts like this.

He is not normal.

He is not normal, because he’s just learned that _not everybody_ grew up this way. He is not normal, because he just learned that not everybody cries alone in the mornings before school because _this feels wrong_ and not everybody is crawling out of the skin that binds them together.

If it meant getting rid of this skin, Nursey would let himself unravel and fall to pieces.

But the girls who he talks to spend hours in front of mirrors doing nothing at all except admiring the body they were born with. The boys who he watches from across the room sit tall and spread their legs as they sit to take up as much room as possible, letting everybody know that they exist, exuding a confidence that Nursey could never manifest.

Nursey spends hours in front of the mirror. He spends morning staring into the reflected image there until his skin is without a single blemish and until each feature is pristine.

Big, dark eyes. A slim nose. Deep, rich cheekbones and pinked cheeks. Thin, sharp eyebrows. A glow on the bridge of his nose and a dusting of creamy power to blend it all together. Plump, rosy lips and long, bouncing curls spilling over his shoulders.

Nursey changes himself until he doesn’t know what the reflection is showing, and then he pretends.

He pretends, he pretends, he pretends, but he’s never even aware of what he’s pretending. He pretends that he’s soft. He pretends that he knows the vessel that his mind’s in, that he feels any kind of connection at all to the feeling of long earrings dangling down and kissing his neck, or that he feels any kind of confidence from the way that his long legs look in iridescent stilettos.

There’s two things that he does have in common with the girls he was raised with, though.

There are some boys that make him freeze on the spot. There are some boys that make his mouth go dry and blow his eyes wide as he watches them. Nursey finds guys attractive, and so do the girls at his table at lunch, so he has that, at least.

It might be cancelled out by the fact that he likes girls, too, but Nursey doesn’t linger on that.

The matter of who Nursey does and doesn’t like is a little complex, anyway. Because sometimes he sees girls and his mind becomes a loading sign, spinning and trying to compute, until he snaps out of his reverie. He doesn’t feel like the girls he likes, either. It’s never jealousy that makes him stop and stare.

But he likes boys, too, and that’s a little harder to understand. Sometimes guys are just _hot._ Sometimes Nursey has to wet his lips again after watching a boy for so long that his whole mouth goes dry. But…sometimes he stops and stares, and it’s not desire, but jealousy. It’s a different kind of longing, where Nursey wants the body that he’s watching and not the body that he’s in.

But it never…it doesn’t _compute_ that he’s different for that until he’s fifteen.

When Nursey was eight, he fell out of a tree. When his back hit the ground, the air had been knocked out of him with such an intensity that he’d just laid there in shock for what felt like _hours_ before he’d sputtered back to life.

The realization that he’s not normal feels the exact same way.

But it’s also refreshing. It’s a drink after a month without rain, and Nursey never wants to stop lingering in the petrichor.

He finds words, definitions, and explanations for who he is, plotting out each point of his identity like a map of the stars.

His parents named him after his paternal grandmother. His grandmother’s name was, in Nursey’s humble opinion, the ugliest name that he’d ever heard. His middle name had been alright—after one of his aunts—but had never been anything that had excited Nursey to hear.

It’s only fair, then, that Nursey’s name stays in the family, right? His grandmother had been a snarky woman, and nobody enjoyed being around her. _Why_ his parents had named their baby after a woman they both hated, he was never quite sure.

But his grandfather was a whole other story. His grandfather was gentle, and had been the one to teach Nursey how to play piano. Nursey had _loved_ his grandfather.

It’s easy to name himself Derek. In fact, there’s no debate in his head. Sharing a name with his grandfather shoots pride up his spine, and the name settles into his skin like a sponge soaking up water.

The next part of his name comes in a different way, because Nursey figures his mother should have a say in his name still.

Rather than ask directly, he says, “what would you have named me if I’d been a boy?”

She replies, “Malik,” without even a beat of hesitation. “We didn’t know what you were going to be, so we had both names picked out.”

Nursey hums noncommittedly, as if he’s not interested, but the moment that breakfast is over he runs upstairs and adds on to the name that he’s written on the inside of his poetry notebook.

_Derek Malik Nurse_

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_Then run_

~  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

His parents aren’t around a lot, but that’s fine. It’s not because they don’t care—they do, and they call him every single night and his mother Skypes him every time that they go and do something interesting so that he doesn’t miss out. He goes with them, when he can. In the summers he travels with them to Greece and Paris and Australia. They’re home when they can be, and when they are they all pile on the couch and watch movies, and his mom rubs circles in his back. But their jobs are important, and Nursey’s education is important, so in the end they spend more time apart than any of them would like.

 It gives him more space to explore. He buys a binder, he plaits his hair into careful braids so that it stays out of his face, and he slowly, subtly transitions his wardrobe from cardigans and pencil skirts to plaid and jeans.

He sinks into this version of his body.

He cuts his hair, but it’s not short. It would brush his shoulders if he straightened it, but instead it bounces down just past his ears, a little puffy, but not messy. He likes his hair like this, so there’s no point in cutting it traditionally when it would only cause hassle for him.

Nursey doesn’t _come out,_ but he finds other ways to embrace himself. Little, subtle ways of being who he is, for three years.

When he’s seventeen, he tries something new, just for fun. It’s a hot, hot summer, so he cuts his hair again. He cuts it short, and he savors the way that his neck feels freer in the beating summer heat. And when he’d looked in the mirror after it had been cut, for one ephemeral moment, he drinks in what he sees.

He’s got on a full face of makeup, but that doesn’t deter him from it. Really, who’s to say that he can’t wear a full face of makeup and still get giddy at the sight of himself, even as a boy?

He goes home and his mother’s face is shocked, but she recovers quickly and says, “you got your hair cut!”

Nursey says, “I like it,” and when his mother agrees, he knows that everything is going to be okay.

 

One day, on a very, very bad day, he doesn’t wear makeup to school. He styles his hair up and he binds and he doesn’t put on even a little mascara.

A girl snickers, but he doesn’t mind. It’s what happens _after_ school that really scares him.

A boy walks up to him, pushes his back against the wall, and growls so close that Nursey can feel the heat of the boy’s breath on his earlobe.

“What are you trying to do?” He says.

Nursey hadn’t replied, holding in bated breath.

“Are you tryin’ to die?” The boy had asked. “You tryn’a be something you’re not? Are you tryin’a _die?_ ”

 _“No,”_ Nursey had replied, and he’d meant to snap it. He’d meant to sneer it, scare the boy into backing off, but instead he just breathes it out.

 _“Then run,”_ the boy snarled, shoving Nursey back as he spun on his heel and marched off.

So Nursey did.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The boy isn’t the reason that he goes.

Nursey leaves because he’s bold enough to in the moment. Because he knows he’ll be home sooner or later, and he’ll have to deal with the consequences then, but he wants to get out there right now. He wants to be _somewhere else_ in this moment, and he’s brave enough to now.

Nursey has never made a choice just for the hell of it.

But today—

 _Today_ Nursey doesn’t feel so calculating and cautious. Today Nursey feels like saying _fuck it!_ and just…going.

So he goes.

He chases down the hiraeth that’s swelling up in him and does his best to track down whatever place it is that he’s longing for.

Derek Malik Nurse walks out of the house with a backpack and a thick wad of cash and lets his feet pull him to wherever it is that he needs to be in the moment. He's not--he's not running from his parents or his life, but...he's running from who he has to be for them and for this. Because he knows he'll chicken out and come back soon, and he'll face the consequences then, but right now he needs something bigger than this. He needs space to grow and space to not hide, and in the moment he's brave enough to chase that down.

He takes the bus, resting his head against the window and using an extra shirt as a pillow to protect against the vibrations. He sleeps a while, but wakes in time to see the sunrise.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_Isn’t it beautiful?_

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It starts like this.

Dex is thirteen and his brother is drumming his fingers on his knee to the beat of the radio as he drives. Normally the noise wouldn’t bother him, but today it digs under his skin.

Dex is thirteen, and he says, “two of the guys on my hockey team are dating.”

His brother’s fingers stop drumming, and Dex takes satisfaction in the fact. Both of his hands go back on the wheel, but he doesn’t turn to look at Dex. “Did you say anything to them about it?”

Dex shrugs, slouching down in his seat. “No. Am I supposed to?”

Maybe his brother will tell him to go beat them up. Maybe his brother will laugh and tell him that they’ll get what they deserve eventually, somehow. Dex will agree with anything that he says, because this is his brother and his brother is cool, but he knows it’s going to sting.

“Well,” his brother says, carefully. “Maybe.”

“What would I say?” Dex huffed. “And why should I care?”

“That you’re happy for them, maybe,” his brother suggests. There’s caution in his tone. “To let them know that you’re not an asshole.”

“Maybe I am,” Dex says, just to be a little shit.

Thomas laughs. “You are. But you’re not _that_ kind of asshole.”

 

It doesn’t sink in until Dex is falling asleep that his brother didn’t see any problem with the way that those boys were, but when it does sink in, he kicks his blankets off and slips on a pair of socks. He walks to his brothers room, down the hall a little ways, and pushes open the door softly.

“Thomas,” he whispers. When his brother doesn’t reply, Dex turns on the light. _“Thomas.”_

Thomas groans from his bed. “What the fuck do you want?”

Dex closes the door with a soft click.

“Will?”

Wordlessly, he climbs up onto the bed and leans against the wall. “You aren’t mad about the boys on the hockey team?”

“What boys? I—oh. The ones who are dating?”

Dex nods, just once.

“Do I…have a reason to be?” Thomas asks.

Dex shrugged, playing with the quilt on his brother’s bed for a few seconds before replying. “They’re gay.”

“I’d assume so,” Thomas quips. Dex slugs his shoulder.

 _“I’m_ gay.”

There’s a beat of silence where Dex expects something, anything, but where nothing at all transpires. And then there’s a shift and Thomas lunges at him. Dex scrambles for a moment, pupils wide, and then his brother is hugging him and he’s sinking into it and wondering how he ever thought his brother would be anything close to cruel or unaccepting. His brother hugs him tight, and then says, “I’d assumed that, too,” and ruins the moment.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There’s never been much. Dex has an assortment of brothers and sisters, mingled together from different bloodlines. Some of them have the same fiery hair that Dex got from his dad. Some have jet black hair from Dex’s stepdad. One or two have bright green eyes from a man none of them have ever met.

His mom gets bored.

When his mom gets bored, she fucks them all over.

A new baby with a new man, a new house in a new city, a new necklace that they can’t afford. Her fun comes first, and her children come second.

They don’t always eat, but their mother always has real diamonds dangling from her ears.

There’s one week from a summer years ago that Dex spent curled up from the pain gnawing at him, while a baby screamed somewhere in the background for a mother who hadn’t been home since before they’d run out of things to eat.

Dex hated her.

He hated how she’d complain about his dad, how useless he was and how little he cared—not because he thought his dad deserved anything less, but because she didn’t seem to realize that she was the exact same as him. Like she thought she was some kind of messiah in comparison, when she was just the reflection.

And the thing is? He’s not mad about the houses. He’s not mad about the siblings. He’s not mad about the men who come and go. He’s not even mad about the damn jewelry.

He’s mad that he could have been so fucking amazing, and instead this is all that he gets. He’s mad that he was born in a stable time in his moms life, that he got to _taste_ normality, and then he had to watch it all drip away right in front of him.

It makes him want to scream.

Instead, he punches the walls until his knuckles bleed, like he could hit the foundation hard enough to make it seep away and crumble. He thinks, _the day I’m old enough, I’m leaving and I’m not coming back_.

It’s wistful, but it’s the only damn thing keeping him going. The thought that there’s something more than all of this.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When he’s old enough to work, he gets a job. He’s the fourth Poindexter kid to do so. Eleanor works at a coffee shop down the road from their house, Thomas cleans dishes at a barbeque restaurant, and Peter works nights at a gas station. It’s not fancy, but it pays the bills.

They function.

Before Dex gets a job, he stays home and watches the little kids. It’s his job to make sure that Lucy doesn’t eat plastic and to break up fights between Beth and Charlie. But when he’s fifteen, he’s old enough to start working for his uncle. The hours are grueling and the pay wage is minimum, but Dex knows better than to say no. They’re stray dogs fighting for scraps, and Dex hands over his days at home. And Beth, who had been the one getting babysat just says before, becomes the babysitter.

Dex cries the first night, because it’s not fair. She’s still a kid, and he’s still a kid, and Peter is still a kid, too. And next year, when Beth is fifteen, her role will be passed along to Charlie, who’s only going to be thirteen.

He hates his mother, and he hates everyone else who fucked them over along the way, too.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

His mother is home for the first time in a week. She sits them all nine of them down at the table, dishes out week-old casserole, and takes her seat at the head of the table. It’s silent, save for Lucy’s babbling as she mashes her hands into her peas.

Eleanor reaches over to wipe her hands off, leveling their mother with a look as she does so.

“How were your weeks?” Their mother asks, taking a bite of her food.

They all stay silent for a while longer; even the little kids know better than to reply. She tries anyway.

“Amelia? Robin?” She asks, because they’re the youngest ones who can talk, and because she’s banking on the fact that she’s still married to their father, and therefore hasn’t loaded them up with resentment yet.

Robin doesn’t say anything at all. He’d spent an entire hour telling Dex about their fifth grade science fair coming up earlier that day, but doesn’t bother mentioning it to their mother. Amelia says, “it was fine,” and then takes a big bite of casserole before their mother can make her continue.

Their mother sighs heavily, and Dex almost feels bad.

Almost.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Eleanor scores a paid internship, buys an apartment, and stabilizes her life within the span of the next year. She turns twenty-three the same day that Dex turns sixteen, and she takes Lucy Jane to go live with her and her boyfriend the very same day. She’s old enough to provide for a five-year-old with ease, and there’s a silent agreement that Lucy will be better off in Washington with Eleanor. It burns, still, to see her go.

When Thomas turns twenty a month later, he takes Robin and Amelia with him to live an hour away.

Peter, still eighteen, stays. He and Dex and Beth work, and Charlie does what he can selling things that he makes. They keep things together, holding the fort down to the very best of their abilities. And it’s just life. It’s always been life. Their mother scarcely makes an appearance, and that’s life, too.

But it starts like this.

Dex is sixteen and Beth is fifteen, and they’re walking home from school on a blisteringly hot afternoon. They pass a tall, blue and brick house with a trampoline in the front yard. A young girl sits with pleated blonde hair on the front porch, eating ice cream, while a big golden retriever sleeps next to her. There’s music playing from inside, and Dex can see the little girl’s mother swaying to it while she washes dishes.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Beth murmurs, and Dex knows that she’s not talking about the house.

It lights a fire in him, makes his resentment kindle and burn like a bonfire. Why do they have to _watch_ other people live? Why can’t they have that? It’s disgusting that she’s calling this beautiful, that a good life is so impossible for them that seeing a glimpse of one is awe-inducing.

There’s nothing fair about it at all, and Dex’s resentment only festers further.

And he thinks, before he can even stop himself, _I’d leave all of this behind if I got the chance to have that._

It makes him feel guilty, knowing that he’d abandon his family in a split second for the taste of greener grass.

But he knows that it’s true.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It starts like this.

Dex reads about greener grass in the city, and he lets his anger fuel him as he leaves. It’s all impulse, ignited by hot, festering anger that digs into him, biting and clawing and yowling for Dex to plant it and let it grow.

So he lets it grow, and he packs a bag and buys a bus ticket and goes. He thinks _I hate you_ as he throws his clothes in. He thinks _what did I do?_ as he gathers his wallet and phone and slips on his shoes. He shrugs on his jacket as he thinks _I could have done something to stop all of this._

He slips out through the door in the middle of the night, only to be stopped by a hand on his wrist. He jumps nearly a mile high. He’s been caught, and the guilt surges up into him like a wave.

When he turns around, Charlie is staring right back at him with the exact same guilt.

“Where are you going?” Charlie asks.

“I’m—um, it’s—I’m not—I mean—,”

“I want to come to.” Charlie is only ten, but he sounds certain. “Peter is going to leave soon. He can take Beth with him. But if you leave, then you have to take me with you. If you stay, though…I won’t tell.”

Dex doesn’t say anything for a very, very long time. Finally he says, “you’re too young.”

“Lucy Jane got to go.”

“Lucy is staying in an _apartment_ with an _adult._ ”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Dex replies honestly. “But it’s better than here.”

Charlie’s eyes narrow, and Dex regrets adding that part. “If it’s so great, then why can’t I come?”

“Because you’re ten, and because I say so. Look,” Dex sighs heavily. “I’m going to go to Massachusetts, okay? To Boston. Give me two months, and then you can come. But I need a while to get a job and a place to stay—maybe longer than that, because I don’t know if things work as fast there.”

“Dex—,”

“Two months, Charlie. And then this,” he gestures at the rickety little house behind them. “Is all going to be over.”

“If mom finds out…”

“Mom won’t find out,” Dex sneers. “As if she’d check in on us.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It starts like this, with Dex sleeping on a bus and waking up to skyscrapers and lights. It starts with Dex watches as the city fades back out to muted suburbs, and finally getting off right in the middle of nothing and everything at all.

It starts with guilt weaving a cage in his chest, but with the pissed desire for something more squashing it away.

He’s guilty. He knows that they’ll hate him. But there’s nothing that he’s not willing to do for anything more than he’s got.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He falls asleep on the next bus, as well. He soothes himself with the lullaby of knowing that his mother is going to come home to nothing. Her little baby girl will be gone, her oldest two children gone with the baby and the two youngest, and Dex gone, too, with Charlie in an apartment in Massachusetts. Her house would be gone, long since repossessed and sold out to a new family, and her kids won’t talk to her. She’ll have nothing except the life on the road that she’s made for herself and the men that she’s fucked along the way.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_Then run._

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nursey is walking and the sun is going down, and his feet bring him into a church. There’s no cars in the parking lot, and no lights on inside, and when he steps inside there’s no signs of life at all. In fact, his feet are leaving footprints in the dust behind him when he walks.

Nobody has been here in a very, very long time.

Nursey takes a few steps inside, wandering along the corridors. There’s some furniture here and there, but it looks old and discarded. He pushes open a set of double doors, wandering inside wide-eyed. On one wall, there’s a set of windows that go from ground-to-ceiling. Nursey can see the city skyline from where he stands, lighting up the lampless room. The stage at the front of the room has a single podium, but is other than that empty. Nursey drops his bag in one of the seats, stepping up onto the sanctuary’s stage.

When he’d been little and his parents had been adamant about church, he had spent hours in rooms like this one. He’d drawn on his knees and written poetry on his palms, but he’d never really payed attention.

They would sing, and sometimes the words would be beautiful, but then they would speak, and the words would always be so filled with hate.

Nursey runs his finger along the grainy podium and lingers on memories from a long time ago.

Nothing was the same now, so he takes a breath and lays out his sleeping bag on the stage.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr is [12am](12am.tumblr.com) if you wanna see more from me!! Feedback is greatly appreciated!


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